Modem society has come to depend heavily on computers and computer technology. It is especially prevalent in the business arena where companies compete fiercely for customers and product sales. A company with just-in-time inventory and well focused advertising strategies generally produces a product cheaper and delivers it faster to a customer than a competitor. Computer technology makes this type of business edge possible by networking businesses, information, and customers together. Although originally computers communicated to other computers via networks that only consisted of local area networks (LANs), the advent of the Internet has allowed virtually everyone with a computer to participate in a global network. This allows small businesses to be competitive with larger businesses without having to finance and build a network structure.
As computing and networking technologies become more robust, secure and reliable, more consumers, wholesalers, retailers, entrepreneurs, educational institutions and the like are shifting paradigms and employing the Internet to perform business instead of the traditional means. Many businesses are now providing web sites and on-line services. For example, today a consumer can access his/her bank accounts via the Internet and perform a growing number of available transactions such as balance inquiries, funds transfers and bill payment.
Moreover, electronic commerce has pervaded almost every conceivable type of business. People have come to expect that their favorite stores not only have brick and mortar business locations, but that they can also be accessed “online,” typically via the Internet's World Wide Web (WWW). The Web allows customers to view graphical representations of a business' store and products. Ease of use from the home and convenient purchasing methods, typically lead to increased sales. Buyers enjoy the freedom of being able to comparison shop without spending time and money to drive from store to store.
Advertising in general is a key revenue source in just about any commercial market or setting. To reach as many consumers as possible, advertisements are traditionally presented via billboards, television, radio, and print media such as newspapers and magazines. However, with the Internet, advertisers have found a new and perhaps less expensive medium for reaching vast numbers of potential customers across a large and diverse geographic span. Advertisements on the Internet may be seen through any content rendered by a browser and/or other client device capable of rendering Internet content. This can include email, game consoles, video-on-demand via TV, web pages, and/or web sites as well as pop-up windows when a particular site is visited and the like.
Thus, global communication networks, such as the Internet, have presented commercial opportunities for reaching vast numbers of potential customers. In the past several years, large amounts of users have turned to the Internet as a reliable source of news, research resources, and various other types of information. In addition, online shopping, making dinner reservations, and buying concert and/or movie tickets are just a few of the common activities currently conducted while sitting in front of a computer by way of the Internet. The proliferation of easy access to the Internet has also facilitated to exponentially grow the traffic to web sites. In some cases, the amount of traffic is extremely large and difficult to estimate. This is unfortunate for those desiring to charge services and advertisements based upon the amount of traffic a web site generates.
Typically, businesses like to be assured that the cost of advertising is justified by some type of guarantee as to the amount of traffic that will be exposed to their advertisements. However, occasionally, fluctuations in traffic to a web site can artificially alter realistic future expectations for that web site's traffic. This may cause a business to pay top dollar for an advertisement with high expectations of substantial exposure of the advertisement to web traffic. This is important to note because meeting expectations is generally how a business stays in business. When expectations are not met, advertisers move along and take their dollars with them. Thus, correctly predicting data, such as web traffic, has a substantial impact on the ever growing Internet business world and elsewhere.